


There's No Business Like Show Business

by noblet



Category: Fake News RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-18 08:57:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10613544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblet/pseuds/noblet
Summary: Jon tells him that he loves him except he doesn’t, except he can’t, except the words get caught in his throat and he has no choice but to either throw them up or choke them down, so he stutters and he fidgets and he thanks him for bothering to come over, and Stephen says that it was no problem at all, dark coat foreboding against light doorframe, hands deep fingering the car keys now warm in his pockets, and leaves without another word.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this fic reads like a Palin speech. angst is all i know how to write ok.

Jon does not kiss him because he knows that Stephen does not want him to. Does not kiss him because even though they’re young and stupid they aren’t _that_ young nor are they _that_ stupid.

It’s the nicotine addiction, or maybe it’s insomnia, the one piece of him that gets so easily lost and forgotten in the back of his mind as the days grow longer. It’s summer again, and he cannot smoke, and he cannot sleep, and he cannot tell Stephen even though every part of his being vies to do so. Because this is work and work is work but he can feel the slow news days piling and growing like the stacks of paperwork on his desk (almost two-feet high, now, and people still wonder why his office policy is no longer open-door) and there are a million things he wants to do but _can’t,_  feels like he's suffocating,because he’s too tired, too energized, he's too much of this and too much of that but the show must go on and maybe that’s why he does nothing but watch the days pass and pass without so much as a break because he just cares too damn much. 

 

“You’re a train wreck,” says the divergent correspondent that Jon’s already worked out to be a little bit different from the rest, he's only four days into his tenure and Stephen with a PH was the very first to make him crack even though he never does.

Jon shrugs as best he can without spilling the coffee from his mug and makes a face lackadaisical. “And?”

Later, they'll laugh about Stephen's blunt greetings and Jon's unaffected responses in the nostalgic way one does when he knows that his best years are behind him. They'll laugh about it over scripts, over plates of long-cooled takeout, over disasters and successes and times of hardship and frustration and Stephen will always look at him the same, will always laugh the same, the same sweet lips always upturned in the same mirthful action that Jon learns to love.

 

Jon tends to tip-toe around ground zero because he knows that acknowledging it would only hurt him. Would hurt him beyond repair, glass body of a human that he is, fragile and tenuous and afraid and perhaps diffident. Humans are not wired for these types of things, are not programmed to deal with issues uncertain and sacrificial and futuristic in nature. It's better, Jon thinks, to pretend that ground zero doesn't exist, to just ignore it, because doing otherwise would only result in his own undoing.

 

When he’s drunk Stephen smiles like he’s three parts amusement one part Snark with a capital S, like there’s something he knows that Jon does not, but that doesn’t bother him much at all, not at all. Because he kind of likes the way Stephen talks about his family with such endearment, about how his sisters once used him as an excuse to not go to Easter Vigil mass or how when he was ten his brothers would throw him the keys to their old ford pinto and force him to drive down Farmfield Avenue in the middle of the day. In the middle of one of Stephen's stories, somewhere between the time he once got caught for sneaking his older brother's copy of  _Misery_ out of his room and the time he got chided into performing a nude scene in college (Stephen described himself back then as cocky and failed to elaborate to his dismay), Jon begins to wish that he had better stories about his family other than the time Larry fired him for crash diving into a shipment of beanbag chairs at Woolworth’s back when he was sixteen and obnoxious.

Stephen laughs at the story anyways, even though Jon’s almost certain he’d told it to him before, even though he tells it with his eyes forward cast on the carvings on the wooden table that he’s leaning too heavy on, gaze stone set on the letters K + B engraved in a half-finished heart. Jon wishes he had a cigarette to compliment the lighter he'd found in his pocket and avoids eye contact because that’s what comes naturally to him.

 

“Are you free for lunch tomorrow?” asks the Stephen that’s Stephen and not “Stephen” one Monday morning, and even over the phone Jon knows that he’s smiling because that’s what he always does. Jon purses his lips hard and says yes without bothering to check his schedule because, honestly, he would've found the time either way.

 

Jon tells him that he loves him except he doesn’t, except he can’t, except the words get caught in his throat and he has no choice but to either throw them up or choke them down, so he stutters and he fidgets and he thanks him for bothering to come over, and Stephen says that it was no problem at all, dark coat foreboding against light doorframe, hands deep fingering the car keys now warm in his pockets, and leaves without another word.

 

The first time they kiss is almost an accident, is almost a disaster, a miracle, a transgression, a dream and a nightmare and a million other things that Jon fails to articulate in the moment but are still  _there._  Whatever this is, Jon can't quite place a finger on it, but after he opens his eyes he notices that Stephen's still smiling at him the same, lips upturned and shiny and slightly amused at Jon's discomposure,  _fuckin' asshole_.

The second time, when Stephen leans in to kiss him again, Jon doesn't flinch.

**Author's Note:**

> Farmfield Ave is a real street in SC lmao.


End file.
